1 April is International Bird Day, which marks the beginning of their return to northern parts from their wintering sites. On 19 March 1902, various countries agreed to the International Convention for the Protection of Birds Useful to Agriculture came into force, which more than a dozen states signed. It entered into force on 12 December 1905. On 18 October 1950, in Paris, diplomats signed the International Convention for the Protection of Birds, which replaced the previous document.
1 April is also associated with children’s events centred on birds, arranged in 1894 by a teacher from a small American town of Oil City PA, Charles Babcock. Soon Bird Day was widely-held as a national holiday throughout the USA.
The theme of the holiday is the conservation of bird species diversity
and the preservation and increase of their populations. This day marks the
first return of migratory birds from their wintering sites. The rooks are
the first to come, then, the wild
geese, ducks, cranes, and gulls arrive. In April, the thrushes, robins, greenfinches, chaffinches, finches, and buntingsreturn. Traditionally, at this time, in
anticipation of the arrival of the birds, people hang birdhouses and build
artificial nests. Birders warn that if birds go extinct, it’d cause an
environmental catastrophe, with unpredictable effects upon human
civilisation. They tell us that such obliteration of fauna would cause irreparable damage to biological
diversity.
More and more countries are
involved in the annual selection of the “Bird of the Year” . National social and professional
organisations concerned with the protection of birds take part in this
“election”. Typically, the choice of the award-winning bird is due to
different reasons… a bird is popular in this-or-that country, with close-links
to a national culture, or it’s a bird species under threat of extinction, to
draw attention to its species preservation, or it’s a bird chosen to
demonstrate the diversity of bird life. Clearly, the Bird of the Year reflects
the success of national response measures to avian protection and successfully
promotes the achievements of environmental organisations and the success of
their programmes.
Ornithologists and ecologists select the spotlighted Bird of the
Year, and they conduct seminars, publish literature and brochures on this kind
of bird, to promote conservation and care of them.
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